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Surprises In Store On Newcastle United Abu Dhabi Trip

10 years ago
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The Newcastle United Abu Dhabi trip has provided predictable headlines following the feeble FA Cup defeat to Cardiff and a losing run going back to Boxing Day.

The win at West Ham was timely as otherwise it would have been like throwing paraffin on the Abu Dhabi fire and there would have been even crazier headlines today.

There is much wrong at our football club and there will continue to be while Mike Ashley owns it, of that I have no doubt.

However, heading off to Abu Dhabi when Newcastle face a weekend without a match doesn’t add up to ‘disgrace’, ‘shocking’, ‘scandal’ or whatever else you want to say about it, in my opinion.

The way people talk, you would think that Mike Ashley had just had a bang on the head and was treating the entire (zero hours contracts, no rights, minimum pay ) staff of one of his Sports Direct jumble sale stores.

Do you really think the multi-millionaire Premier League footballers of today are impressed in any way by heading off to somewhere like Abu Dhabi and staying at a nice hotel?

Where do you think they stay when they go off on their own holidays – hostels, tents, French Butlins?!!!

What is best about this non-story compared to the mental image most fans have, is that in reality January is the coldest month in Abu Dhabi with average temperatures of 18 degrees AND in fact it has been raining over there for the last week (thanks to Roy Kaviani for the tip-off) and is forecast to do so for at least the next couple of days!

More than this though, the squad trip away together ticks more important boxes.

If the squad weren’t going away together then I assume it would be a knocking bet that instead all the players would have been given X number of days off and many would then have headed off to see friends & family back in the home country.

The transfer window is tedious enough without the guaranteed extra transfer stories that would have been generated by Cabaye, Ben Arfa and the rest giving unguarded quotes that end up being deliberately misinterpreted for the benefit of the english reader.

So yes it might be a few degrees warmer than on Tyneside, and the rain might stop in a couple of days, but there is a lot more for us to be thinking about than the players playing videos games in hotel rooms in Abu Dhabi instead of on Tyneside.

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